Information Management Systems (IMS), such as Database Management Systems (DBMSs), as with any other software applications, are not perfect and issues with the software (e.g., bugs, poor performance, etc.) often may appear. To address these issues, it is useful to have some tool that allows a software developer or IMS manager to troubleshoot the application. However, unlike other types of software applications, the behavior of an IMS depends heavily on the information itself. Thus, to troubleshoot issues, it is necessary to reproduce the conditions in which the issues have appeared. Such reproduction requires not only replication of the contents of the IMS itself, but also the attributes of those contents.
In a production environment, an IMS contains data that come from real entities, such as people, businesses, and governmental organizations. This data often is sensitive (e.g., social security numbers, salaries, birthdates, telephone numbers, etc.) and should be treated with extreme care, since even a small leak or loss of the data could seriously affect the entities associated with the data, as well as a business or an IMS provider's reputation. In addition, government regulations often require software companies to comply with regulations that have been issued with the specific purpose of protecting a user's privacy. Accordingly, to avoid the possibility of compromising sensitive data, the data associated with an IMS should be desensitized when testing or developing the IMS.